Hefe Brew Day

Just brewed up another 5 gallons of my Pistols 'n Pesos recipe (see dropdown). It's the first brew on the new deck, second brew at the new house, and second batch sparge ever (no, I'm not a convert...yet). Hit the numbers almost perfectly! ...a pleasant surprise after my last batch came up a little shy.

I was going to do a Bavarian hefe that would be ready in time for Oktoberfest, but I forgot that I have a TON of K-97 on hand, so I elected to do an American wheat, instead. This is my first batch of beer with that particular strain. I'm pitching a little warm, and the fermentation will be in a 74°F environment. Tasting notes to follow.

I also decided to try out the olive oil trick with this one. I rehydrated the yeast in a small, sanitized bowl that had about two drops of oil in the bottom. I'm not going to set up an experiment with a control, but I'll monitor the lag time and fermentation activity and compare it with previous batches.

Nice deck Yuri. Looks good.

Nice deck, did you go with cedar planks?

Pressure treated with a nice weatherproofing stain.

Good call. My parents used cedar planks on their deck and it didn't last 5 years. They just replaced it with the composite planks.

So how did your efficiency do as compared with your usual fly sparging? If lower, was it low enough to justify a return to fly sparging? You sort of hinted at something like that. Come clean now!

Professor - I couldn't justify the cost of the composite stuff. I could replace the pressure treated decking about 3 times for the same price.

Fingers - I hit nearly 80% (actually had to cut the amount of honey in order to nail the OG, since the recipe was based on 75%). I routinely get up to 85% when I fly sparge. I don't really like the batch sparge process. I'd rather set the grain bed once and filter everything through it. Of course, if I had a braid instead of a false bottom, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. With the false bottom, I find that I have to vorlauf quite a bit during the second and subsequent runnings. Even so, I'm getting a cloudier wort than I prefer. However, the local water is AWESOME. I'm getting some of the biggest break material I've ever seen, and the last batch cleared very quickly. Over the next few months, I'll be building some new equipment that should make fly sparging a breeze. For now, I'm just doing some small, simple batches while I get geared up again.

Professor Frink said:

Good call. My parents used cedar planks on their deck and it didn't last 5 years. They just replaced it with the composite planks.

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When I used to be in construction I loved this stuff. The material I was using was made out of recycled pop bottles. You could get it in any color, heavy as sin. But no splinters. Built in bug repelent(no bees, wasps, hornet nests) and easier to cut, drill and nail through that any traditional decking material. And again, EXPENSIVE as HELL.

This unscheduled interruption was brought to you be

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Now back to your regularly scheduled brewing conversations.

that looks great for pressure treated, i live in socal and all of our pressure treated is bright green, was this stuff bright green?

It was sort of a dull gray/green. Not bright, but not appealing, either.

Update on the brew - lag time was under 10 hours (had a nice krausen by the time I checked on it in the morning). It's going nuts right now - the blow off tube is like a bubble machine gun.

Yuri_Rage said:

Professor - I couldn't justify the cost of the composite stuff. I could replace the pressure treated decking about 3 times for the same price.

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It's definitely expensive, I would go with the pressure treated myself. That cedar didn't last at all.

Update: The krausen is falling, and the SG is down to 1.011. Even pitched somewhat hot, K-97 doesn't throw many esters. It's got a slightly fruity aroma and rather clean flavor profile. This is an easy drinking summer brew, and I'm sure it will go over well with the light beer crowd.

Your doggie door looks possessed by Satan.

I'm still trying to figure out how you *forget* about having a friggin' brick of dry yeast.